


Refined

by pathsofpassion



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Demon!Dean, Gen, M/M, but demon dean is still pretty much dean in this one, post s9
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2016-10-17
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:26:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8310169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathsofpassion/pseuds/pathsofpassion
Summary: He may be a demon, but so far, he's really just Dean.





	

Demons can care, you know.

He didn’t understand. Meg, fuckin’ _**Ruby**_ , Lilith - he didn’t understand that crucial detail.

Hell, maybe he’s different. He just got the job, and not in the usual way. His soul wasn’t tortured out of him (though don’t you think for one second it didn’t still _hurt_ ). No decades to centuries of torment, here. It’s tied to the Blade, it all is, damn thing’s like an extension of his arm now.

But he is still. Dean. Winchester.

That’s the best and the worst part, he supposes.

He follows Crowley down to the dungeon - well. ‘Follows’. Crowley is forced down by Sam’s summoning, and Dean can feel the thread of that power now, see it with senses he never had before, a thin black cord. He’s not compelled to it because it don’ have his nametag, but he figures it’s better to face the music now rather than later.

At least he short-circuited Sam making another demon deal. With the King of Hell, no less. That lying little bitch. Dean might cold clock him again - except no. No. Sammy’ll want a hug and to bawl all over his shoulder, and Dean will let him.

He waits in the doorway, leans, arms folded, while Crowley banters with a choked-sounding, raw-grief-throated Sam. Cuts the King’s petty taunting short by clearing his throat.

He hasn’t figured out how to turn his eyes normal yet. Says, “Hey, Sammy,” all quiet-like.

And yeah, he has an armful of Moose. Fuckin’ punch to the shoulder too, but armful of quivery, shivery Sam, who’s cussing him out and crying in these little whimpers that are so, so much worse than if he was bawlin’ like a baby.

He would think that most demons would shove Sam away, slit his throat, stick the Blade in him. He would have thought that, before.

But he is still Dean Winchester. So he holds his baby brother close and tells the old, familiar lie: “C'mon, Sammy. It’s gonna be okay.”

*** 

It takes a long time to get from Heaven to Kansas.

The Winchesters could have told him this, Castiel suspects, but it does not make the journey any easier. He first must get _out_ of Heaven via a backdoor that is increasingly unstable with the angel-tablet broken, and then make his way in a car that last held himself and his fallen brother to where the bunker is. _Gadreel_ , _Gadreel_ , but he has no time to mourn.

He is not sure why he goes.

There is Sam, yes. Sam is his friend. His very dear friend whom he would and has done terrible things for. And Sam. He does not know what Sam will do. Whether Sam thinks him dead, or trapped in Heaven. He does not think Sam will wait for Castiel’s arrive to light the funeral pyre.

More concretely, he worries that Sam will _not_ light a funeral pyre.

Perhaps that is why he goes. He certainly does not go because he has any need himself to see Dean Winchester’s body burning in a hunter’s burial.

(It is. It is. He needs to know. He will never live at peace until he _knows_ , and wingless it could take a literal millennium to search all of heaven and find the one that is Dean’s. He must know that Dean is truly dead, is not returning, must see it with his own vessel’s eyes to feel it in his heart. He will not contemplate that Dean would be anywhere but heaven.)

A day passes, driving all night, pushing his faltering, burning, stolen Grace to its limits to keep his vessel going. He arrives.

Castiel parks the Continental in front of the bunker; he doubts that he is staying. There is so much in heaven that needs fixing, so much that may be hanging on by threads with the tablet broken (at his hands, at his hands, everything broken at his hands). And what Sam will need from him, Castiel cannot give him in a day or a month or a year or a decade.

He worries that he has not heard Sam praying.

He worries.

The bunker opens to him. He has the sense that voices were speaking as he entered, but quieted when he closed the heavy, loud door. If Sam is here with company… perhaps the Sheriff? Perhaps he has called some of the Winchester’s few remaining friends to say goodbye? Why, then, not reach out to Castiel himself?

“Sam?” Cas heads toward the kitchen, Dean’s kitchen, ignoring the pang in his chest with a deep, slow breath that has become second nature over the last day. “Are you here?”

Quietness, a pause. Sam’s voice comes back to him, edged with something unfamiliar. Wariness. Sam has not spoken to him with wariness in years. “In here, Cas.”

He goes in. Sam is seated at the table. There is a plate in front of him, half-eaten, salad and burgers. There is another plate on the table, a chair kicked out as though the owner had just left. Cas moves forward. This is, surely, if nothing else, an appropriate time for a hug.

Sam stops him with one hand. Does not speak, which makes Castiel frown, open his mouth to demand answers, but the younger only Winchester just nods to the space behind him.

Castiel turns, and every molecule of breath rushes from his borrowed lungs.

Dean is posed near the door, ready to run, his body tensed and strung taut with the need to flee. He is clean-clothed, clean-shaven, he is thrumming with energy and discordant power and even with toxic borrowed Grace Cas can see his soul.

It burns with black fire, now, but it is still the brightest, darkest, most beautiful thing he has ever beheld.

A soft cry falls from his mouth and then he is pushing Dean up against the wall because this is _Dean_ and he is _Cas_ and nothing is alright but he is _alive_. He stares at the dear, beloved face in wonder for long seconds, lost to see it vibrant and healthy and whole. He can see the specks of his old Grace knit within the flesh, intermingled with Dean’s own now-demonic soul, and the true face of that soul should be a horrible thing to an angel but this is _Dean _and it is not. It is not.__

Dean has cringed away from him, like he expects a smiting or a scolding or a shout, has closed the black eyes he obviously has not discovered control of yet. Breathing out a low, low sigh, Cas leans his forehead in the crook of the hunter’s neck. It is a strange hug, his hands on Dean’s shoulders, his forehead snug to the crook of the man’s throat, but it feels better than all of the hugs Castiel has yet experienced.

“ _Dean_ ,” he sighs, and there is nothing of censure in the word, nothing but what has always been there: relief, care, _meaning_. It was, quite clearly, the last thing the hunter expected; Dean all but crumbles into his arms, falling forward and dropping his head in a mirror of Cas’s and clutching Cas’s vessel tight.

He does not say that it will be ‘okay’. But he holds Dean, holds this demonic version of his Righteous Man who was always so much more than that, and breathes out a softer, keener, “ _Dean_.” _I thought I lost you._

It is not okay. But it will be. Because they are all three here, and that - that, Castiel has finally learned, will _always_ be enough.

**Author's Note:**

> I may write more of this. Right now I'm just cross-posting old ficlets from my [tumblr](https://pathsofpassion.tumblr.com) to my AO3.


End file.
